The Overture

Assalamualaikum and a very good day to everyone who is reading this entry. I am a student of UiTM and I am studying a course called English for Professional Communication. Ahem. It is customary for a gentleman to introduce himself in the beginning of an interaction. I am well-known as Mike since I was in high school. I do not know how the name Mike came to being but it spread like a plague and soon everyone was calling me Mike instead of Mikhail. There are those who prefer to call me by my rightful name as well and to be frank, I do not really care about it. To me, as long as it helps the people to remember me easily and make them feel at ease whenever I am around, then by all means, you may call me anything as you see fit as long as  they are not offensive and insulting. 

Now then! What is it that I do here at Akademi Pengajian Bahasa (APB) and what is English for Professional Communication? APB is a place where we learn languages, both local and international languages, such as English, Japanese, Arabic, German, Mandarin and French. For my course however, I am studying English more deeply and thoroughly. Now I know what most people would think. "Oh, you're studying TESL?" "You must be a TESL student then" or "Isn't that TESL?". 

No, my dear readers, it is not and we are not TESL students. Yes, we study English like the TESL students but wait. That's not all we're studying here. 

First, let me define and explain what TESL is. Teaching English as a Second Language or TESL is course where the students are groomed to be future teachers of English. Now. TESL students job prospect is very, very limited and the most prominent job for these students are teaching. It doesn't necessarily have to be in a school. They can also teach employees in a company as well or a tuition or whatever it is that suits the teaching profession because that's what TESL is all about. Teaching. An honourable profession, in my opinion.  

English for Professional Communication or EPC, on the other hand, focuses on the usage of English in professional settings like the workplace, a company, meetings etc. We learn English much deeper than TESL, that much can be said. But we also learn things like Marketing, Principles in Management, Organizational Behaviour, Language and Communication and Web Enable Multimedia E-Language Production. Basically, we're learning English as well as all the skills necessary in a workplace environment. Professional skills. As for the job prospects, they are very wide. They can range from being a tutor to a diplomat and everything in between such as translator, scriptwriter, and public relations.

As I am writing this, some people complained that I am writing too long of an entry. Thus, I will stop here for now and continue this memoir in the next entry. Farewell, good readers of blogs. I wish you a very good day and may your day be better than it was yesterday.

Yours truly, 

Mikhail